office of federal procurement policy act ... - Bayhdolecentral

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OFFICE OF FEDERAL PROCUREMENT
POLICY ACT
AMENDMENTS OF 1979
59.-139 0- 79 (87)

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RESEARCH PROGRAMS-GOALS FOR HIGHER EnUCATHlN 57
research funds rather than by individual judgments as to the intrinsic
worth of the projects:
However, in many fields, especially the social sciences,
career choice, or the decision about what line of scholarship
to pursue, is almost inevitably distorted by the knowedge that
one line of inquiry is eligible for snpport and will bring in
$2,000or $3,000 more income, whereas another must, at worst,
be wholly without research compensation, or at best, take the
chance. of ad hoc summer grants from foundations or university
fluid research funds.
These pressures and temptations are greatest at the very
beginning of an academic career, .when the young instructor
is for the first time charting his professional course,
but has the leastbargaining power because he is not yetvisible
to his peers or to public or private patrons who might screen
his proposals.t-"
Dr. David Riesman, of the Department of Social Relations, Harvard
University, warns of the same danger:
* * * It is not so much that the "hard science" departments
are being supported, but that the "hard" outlooks are
being supported within every field, including the humanities.
The academic judgments as to what is "research" and the
judgments as to what are the appropriate methods for discovery,
tend to become stereotyped as the result of the anxieties
of young researchers lest they not be pursuing the approved
formulas--approved, that is, within their academic subguilds.
Throughout American life, and not only in the
academic and research world, there is a search for easily
grasped standards of 'performance which avoid the making
of difficult qualitative judgments.v"
Dr. Robert Lekachman, a specialist in economic history and theory,
resigned this year from the faculty of Barnard College at Columbia
"IJIliversity because of the university's tendency to be "excessively
attached to econometric and mathematical techniques" to the .exelusion
of "historical and societal" analyses of economic problems.'''
A. RECOMMENDATION
. The subcommittee recommends that massively increased support for
scholarship and for instruction in the humanities and the social sciences-by
private means, and by Federal, State, and local governments--be
accepted as anImportant national goal.
xea Responsas (pt. 2), p. 173.
ras.Responsas (pt. 2),p. 389.
:1$ The New York Times, Apr. 24, 1965.